🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 30 Jun 1998 08:28:29 GMT, Walt Horning <whorning@pipeline.com> wrote:
>efaubion@oklahoma.ten (E. Faubion) wrote:
>
>>
>They do not have a tailgating problem, because most places the limits
>are higher or suggested speed limits on autobahns. Guess what? Per
>miles driven they have a slightly lower death rate than we do. They go
>100+ mph, we are stuck at 60 or 70 and take more lives. How come?
>
>And how come the death rate went down in Maryland when the raised the
>limit from 55 to 65? The reason is easy. Congestion was reduced and
>with it tailgating was too. The optimum of saving lives in MD is
>probably closer to 75 mph limit. Confused? Yes, I agree that at higher
>speeds death is more likely in an accident. However, if higher speeds
>reduces congestion and this reduces interaction and this in turn
>reduces accidents so that it more than offsets deaths when accidents
>do happen, then we have something know as "highway dynamics". Oddly,
>on  wide open roads, higher speeds only translate to higher deaths. In
>congested areas, increased speeds have been now proven to reduce
>deaths, something that is intuitively contrary to our thinking.
>
>But here's one for you. If 55 is "safe". Isn't 45 safer, and 35 and 25
>and 15 too? So why don't we have a 15 mph limit on our highways to
>save lives? I mean what is an "acceptable' number of deaths? Well,
>none is of course. But we have some "arbitrary" idea what is
>acceptable. So we raise the limits and "accept" that some deaths are
>inevitable, however regrettable they may be. But what we raise them
>too is still arbitrary, and if its arbitrary, the Europeans figured
>out long time ago to do three things:
> (1) make highways safe as poosible with guard rails down the middle
>     when opposing lanes are too close (unlike here)
> (2) driver training is mandatory. No training, no license
> (3) let them drive fast enough to ease congestion and thus actually
>     reduce deaths by increased limits or have none at all.

And don't forget:

 (4) Have older, more homogenous societies, with narrow streets and no
     lane control and park on the sidewalk.
 (5) Have denser cities with public transportation and more mixed use zoning
     so people can live near where they work.
 (6) Ban driving at night with headlights on in cities.
 (7) Drink two large litres of strong dark beer with lunch then sit in traffic.
     Claim you don't have American style road rage and drunk drivers.
 (8) Have a tradition of machismo and popular road racing and "killer B" racing
     and consider large numbers of spectators killed by crashes heroic.
 (9) Highly tax petrol and arbitrarily tax engine size, creating a bunch of 
     ridiculously underpowered econoboxes.
 (10) Make trucks completely unsafe, but keep their statistics separate.
 (11) Idolize race drivers who end up upside down a lot.
 (12) Make oversteer a "desired" handling characteristic through misapplication
      of racing technology to road cars.
 (13) Let engineers kill themselves off with twin-engine deathmobiles.
 (14) Put all environmental problems off to the east.
 (15) Indentured servitude for the dirty work.
 (16) Let anyone drive on a race course, mixing tour busses with high-powered
      GT cars.
 (17) Product liability?  What's that?  If you are afraid to die, go drive a
      Jetta.
 (18) Test drive high-powered exotic cars on roads with herds of farm animals.
 (19) Bureaucratize!  Bureaucratize!  Bureaucratize! 
 (20) Make poeple say you make the trains on time.
 (21) Give people their birthdays off and 4 weeks vacation a year - then take
      it away.
 (22) Kill anyone who doesn't agree with you.  They're not really people, so
      you don't have to include them in the stats, either.
 (23) Make things arbitrarily illegal in one place, but not another.  Blame
      all problems on those from elsewhere.
 (24) Idolize anyone from California.

>
>


-- 
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